My flash fiction piece "Cold Beer - Cheap Rooms" now appears in Nixes Mate Review in their summer 2018 issue. As Nixes Mate says, "With every new horror, with every new heatwave, with every norm a carcass swept up in the dustbin of history there is always poetry and literature. ... We share new voices and returning voices, the voices of friends, voices of hope and voices of humor." This issue has a wide variety of voices and styles, and I hope you enjoy this new story of mine. Thanks!

Beyond writing reviews of independent bookshops at my other blog at this site, The Bookshop Hunter, I have also started to write a column about my adventures on the road going out and visiting all of these shop, writing about who I see, what I do, where I go, and so on. The second offering in this series is now up at the incredible FIVE:2:ONE Magazine and it's called "The Bookshop Hunter: Journey to the Isle of Dogs." This edition talks about my trip into western Massachusetts to see the recent Wes Anderson film, Isle of Dogs, and to hit up a half dozen bookshops along the way. If you like it you can also find my first column at the site too! Thanks for taking a look, and there will be plenty more bookshop hunting journeys and columns coming soon! Thanks.

One of my favorite online literary journals, Lonesome October Lit, has published my poem "Long Before Twilight," which contains all sorta of fun nostalgic references to my grade school library, books about werewolves, and childhood daydreaming. The poem also appears in my narrative poetry collection We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine, which is available at Amazon. Be sure to read the other eerie, spooky poems and stories over at Lonesome October Lit too, and let me know what you think! Thanks for reading.

It's always a good feeling to find yourself in one of your hometown lit magazines, and Up The River: A Journal of Poetry, Art, & Photography is a gorgeous literary web-zine hosted by Albany Poets, an organization promoting events and writers in the Albany, NY area. My poem "Spiders at Night" appears in Up The River, Issue Six, alongside the work of other poets I really enjoy, like Kevin Ridgeway, Alan Catlin, and others. Check out the poem and scroll the through the other issues for a lot of excellent poetry. Thanks!

Hobo Camp Review is hosting a contest with a $25 prize (no fee) for the upcoming autumn issue! The HCR Flash Around the Campfire Competition is open to any flash fiction (we'll even consider long-ish narrative poetry) under 1,000 words, and the shorter the better. All the usual guidelines apply, and again, there's NO fee. There will be a special judge (TBA) who will award $25 and a free book or two from our knapsack to the lucky scribe. The submission window closes on Labor Day, 9/3/2018. For info about the kind of work that moves us, or give any of our issues a look online. Thanks!

Two of my poems recently appeared at Winedrunk Sidewalk, an online daily poetry journal that also subtitles itself "Shipwrecked in Trumpland," and focuses on anti-authority, political, and working class poems. These two, "Lo Cool, 69 Degrees" and "Soft White Infinity" certainly fall along those lines. I hope you enjoy.

The editors at Misfit Magazine included a brief write-up of We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine in their lengthy "Books Received, Reviewed, Acknowledged" section. They point out one particular poem, "Ghost Train," as being a standout, and it's always interesting to me which poems make a mark with people. It's always a different one, for different reasons, and this poem and I go way back so I'm glad it stood out. Take a look at the write-up and scan the section to see who else they've been reading! They also publish a lot of great poets and writers, including Kevin Ridgeway, Megan Jessop, and Holly Day in their current issue, so check that out as well.

BONED Every Which Way 2017 is an anthology of the poems that appeared at the BONED online magazine over the course of the year, and the new paperback edition includes two of my poems, "Dry Tide" and "Going Ghost." The first poem, "Dry Tide," first appeared in my mini-chapbook The Darkest Bomb from the Lantern Lit, Vol. 1 collection, which is also available online. The second, "Going Ghost," takes me back to my days in Berlin, Germany almost eight years ago. Feels like yesterday. Anyway, the collection is full of great poets, including Mikey Sivak, Wanda Marrow Clevenger, Susie Sweetland Garay, RM Engelhardt, Matthew Borczon, Mat Gould, and others. The anthology is also edited by Nate Ragolia, who is a fine poet himself. I hope you are able to pick up a copy, it's pretty darn affordable at just under $12. Enjoy!

I've been seeking out bookshops and reviewing them at my other blog, The Bookshop Hunter, for a few months now. It has been a blast, and now I have a column over at FIVE:2:ONE Magazine about my bookshop hunting trips around upstate New York, NYC, and beyond. In this first column, "The Bookshop Hunter: Electric City and Beyond," I explore Schenectady, NY and other nearby towns. FIVE:2:ONE is an weird-baby consortium of awesome writers, reviewers, poets, columnists, artists, and plenty more. They always have something new going on and I highly recommend you check them out!

Alan Furst and his series of “Night Soldiers” novels focus the European underground résistance against the Nazis between the years of (give or take) 1932 and 1945, and they have been an absolute pleasure to read and re-read since I discovered him back in 2012. One aspect I appreciate most about the series is that the main characters are not your typical British or American WWII hero archetypes—spies, soldiers, or otherwise. Furst gives us more of a grassroots perspective of Europe’s turmoil in that time. Some main characters are Polish army officers, newspaper reporters, Russian spies, Greek detectives, French film producers, etc. They’re people from all walks of life, and they all start out fearful of the Nazi regime and are unsure of what they can do against Hitler’s minions, but each finds a way to help, somehow. My rankings tend to shift depending on which one I’ve read last, but there’s really only one I disliked. The rest range from solid to incredible, and I hope this list inspires you to give the series a chance!

My new poem, "The Guest Room Closet," now appears at Lonesome October Lit, one of my favorite online publications. As they say at their website, Lonesome October Lit "is a horror webzine for poetry as well as short fiction. The founding editor felt there was a lack of space out there for horror poems in a market flooded with mainstream literary venues and homes for genre prose fiction." If you love spooky, scary, atmospheric poetry and short fiction, this is the place for you. My poem is about an eerie childhood visit to a small village in the Hudson Valley, where something dark waits for a wayward guest. I hope you enjoy!

Turning words into comfort, weapons, and the most widely embraced artform of our time

During many of the most recent political shifts toward conservative nationalism, be it in Europe or in America, I have heard the call that artists must take up the mantle and create, that this must become a period of renewed drive, and that poetry, among the many arts we need now more than ever, will lead the way back to brighter times.

I have my doubts. Certainly not about the power of poetry to provide solace in trying times or to lift the veil on hypocrites and racists. Instead I worry about poetry’s ability to do so in an effective manner. I should add that my doubts do not stand in defiance of trying, but if we’re going to turn our art into tools of comfort for allies and into useful weapons against oppressors, we’d better make damn sure we’re not working inside an echo chamber.

Over the next handful of months I’ll be reading my poetry at a few events in upstate New York, although I may be able to attend some others in NYC and areas beyond if the timing works out. I’m also hoping to set up a few readings on the west coast later this year, so watch this space for more announcements!

March 28, Wednesday - Noir at Troy Poetry Mission: Co-host R.m. Engelhardt had the genius thought to hold a themed reading for noir pieces, something we both love, and we’re hoping you will too. Sign-up starts at 7:30 pm at O’Brien’s Public House in Troy, NY, and the reading starts at 8 pm. Have a drink, a mean, sit back, and enjoy the noir poems and stories from local writers, including yours truly.

April 20, Friday - Readings Against the End of the World: In mid-April, Albany, NY will celebrate a week of readings and events as part of the annual Word Fest. I will be giving a 10-minute reading as part of the Readings Against the End of the World, a 24-hour read-a-thon to benefit the South End Children’s Cafe. The event will kick off Friday, April 20 at the Husted Hall Café on the UAlbany Downtown campus, and will continue until Saturday, April 21. As always, I’ll have copies of my book We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine on hand.

May 6, Sunday - DiBiase Poetry Prize Reading: My poem "Strawberry Fields Forever" placed as an Honorable mention in the 2018 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Contest. So many great writers appeared among the winners that it's an honor to even be mentioned, not to mention the $70 check that helped pay off some medical bills (and maybe bought a whisky or two). Winners and finalists will be giving a reading of their work in a special afternoon event. This will take place on Sunday, May 6 between 1:30 and 3:30 pm at the main branch of the Albany Public Library which is located at 161 Washington Ave. in downtown Albany NY. Again, I’ll have books on hand for anyone interested.

July 19, Thursday – Albany Social Justice Center Reading: On what I can only suspect will be a hot Thursday night in upstate New York, I’ll be reading as the feature poet at Albany’s Social Justice Center at 33 Central Ave. There will be an open mic before I get up there, and I’m looking forward to seeing who shows up to read their own work. And again, I’ll have plenty of books on hand.

It’s a huge honor to announce that my poem “Strawberry Fields Forever” has placed as an honorable mention in the 2018 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry contest, and I’m joined by a bunch of excellent poets including Martin Willitts Jr. (1st place), Richard Foerster (2nd), Rebecca Schumejda (3rd), Olivia McKee, Mary Panza, Dan Wilcox (all honorable mentions), and others. There will be a reading in May in Albany, NY for winners and finalists and it’ll be open to the public. I’ll post more details soon and I'll be there. My poem, “Strawberry Fields Forever,” is from my book We Are All Terminal But This Exit Is Mine and looks back on a childhood memory of picking strawberries with my mother at a farm that no longer exists, or at least it doesn’t exist the way it did way back when. I miss simpler times like those, and this poem is a nostalgic one for sure. My deepest thanks too the judges and those who organized the contest. You certainly made my day much brighter.

It happens to all of us at different points in our writing lives: we hit a stretch where we can’t seem to finish anything, or the ideas have dried up faster than morning rain on an Arizona highway. It happened to me this last year when I finished one novel and was excited to start a fresh project, except each novel idea I started fizzled out. They weren’t right. Same went for a few short stories I had rattling around in my head. I’d make it halfway through before casting each aside. Even poems felt forced. I felt stuck. I WAS stuck. And I was breaking Neil Gaiman’s wise and important rule: “Whatever it takes to finish things, finish.” It was a hollow, scary feeling.

But instead of sitting back and waiting for inspiration to strike, I tried a few of the methods below to jumpstart that old excited feeling, to help me start something I could finish. I picked these up from other writers, so it's not like these are fresh, original ideas, but they helped me out, bit by bit. I’m hoping that if they worked for me, they’ll work for you.

Watching a twelve-year-old child working a typewriter is a special kind of magic in our modern era, magic enough all on its own, but when he finishes and says he wrote about his feelings on police brutality and runs off to give it to a friend, that’s not magic, that a game changer.

Two new pieces that relate to driving along the more remote and nostalgic stretches of highway are now posted at the Punch Drunk Press website. My narrative poem "West Texas Skyway" concerns a memory of driving out to Ft. Davis and Alpine with my father and sister, and my poem "We'll Take a Trip to See" concerns memories of returning to a small town long after leaving a life and relationship behind, many years prior. I hope you enjoy, and many thanks to the editors at Punch Drunk Press for including my work at their website!

I recently had the privilege to be part of Up The Staircase Quarterly's 10th Anniversary celebration, in which April Michelle Bratten, longtime editor of the incredible magazine, asked me to help select one of the best pieces over the last 10 years. Since one of my own poems appeared in UTSQ in 2011, she asked that I scour that year for a choice poem, and I selected "waking//daydream//or I MAY JUST CEASE TO EXIST:" by Faith Mingus. It's an excellent poem about her truest self, an existence of choice, a reality running counter to her day-to-day life. I highly recommend not just this piece, but the entire issue, which is full of other great selections, poets, and reviews! And keep submitting your own work to UTSQ, which I hope will be going strong for another ten years and far beyond!

About twelve years ago I received a poetry rejection from a magazine editor who shall remain nameless (because I can’t remember who it was for the life of me). This editor told me he rejected my work because the poems were all about myself, the poet, writing poetry, and nobody cares about “I” poems anymore. While this was (and remains) untrue in the wider sense, it took me years to understand what this editor meant by his rejection.

My new flash fiction story "Two Kings" now appears at Indigent Press, which you can read online alongside a slew of other great poets and writers, including Heather Minette, Jason Ryberg, Kat Giordino, Paul Corman-Roberts, and a bunch of others. This quick little story of mine takes place just before Christmas as I scrounge for extra cash to get by and visit the quarreling "two kings" to trade gold for cash. I hope you enjoy. My deepest thanks goes to the Indigent Press editors for including my work!

Editorial Note: The Bookshop "Reviews" express my own thoughts and feelings on shops based upon first impression visits. The Bookshop "Interviews" express the thoughts and feelings solely of those interviewed, and I have made the choice to not censor any viewpoints, be they positive or negative, for the sake of representing candid individual expression about our love, distaste, impressions, and complex relationships with bookshops in our own communities. I encourage all readers to visit the shops represented here and decide for themselves how they feel about each!